As the child death toll rises at an alarming rate in Gaza, the United Nations expressed serious concern that, on average, Israeli forces killed one child every hour for the past three days. The total number of confirmed child deaths now stands at 123, with an additional 60 cases under investigation by DCI-Palestine. Seven children from three families died together Sunday evening, July 20, in the Remal neighborhood of Gaza City. Two Israeli missiles killed Mohammad Hani Mohammad Hallaq, 2, his cousins Saji Hasan Akram Hallaq, 4, and Kenan, 6, alongside their neighbors Ibrahim Khalil Abed Ammar, 13, and his siblings Iman, 6, and Asem, 3. A third Israeli drone missile killed their neighbor Rahaf Akram Ismail Abu Juma'a, 4. On Monday afternoon, in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, an Israeli aircraft targeted the al-Qassas home, killing nine family members, including six children. Isra' Yasser Khader al-Qassas, 12, and his siblings Yasmin, 8, Arwa, 6, and Samar, 3, were playing with their cousins, Lamia, 14, and Nesma, 10, when they died. The al-Kilani family fled their home in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahia to the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City at the start of Israel’s aerial assault. Following intense Israeli attacks on Shuja’iyya, the family relocated to the Salam apartment complex in the center of Gaza City. On Monday evening, an F16 airstrike targeted their building, killing Reem Ibrahim Theeb al-Kilani, 12, and her four siblings, Sawsan, 11, Yasin, 9, Yasser, 8, and Elias, 4. Mahmoud Shaaban Mohammad Derbas, 16, was killed in the same strike. A family in the Mahatta area of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza lost two cousins, Othman Salem Abdul-Majid Brai'em, 17, and Fadi Azmi Abdul-Majid Brai'em, 17, who were killed by a targeted drone missile while bringing their donkey water on their farmland. The shelling of an UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun on Thursday added to growing concerns that Israel is violating international law. At least fifteen died in the attack on the compound, which acts as a shelter for nearly 800 displaced people. UNRWA officials confirmed that they gave precise coordinates of the shelter to the Israeli army before the attack.

Child injured in bombing of UN School in Beit Hanoun The bodies of Palestinian families killed overnight in Khuza’a, in eastern Khan Younis, continue to be pulled from the rubble and identified, as air strikes and tank shelling continue throughout Thursday afternoon and evening.

A child from the Qdeih family, which already suffered the loss of two family members in a pre-dawn airstrike on Thursday, has been identified as: 1. Badr Hatem Qdeih, 13, Khuza’a, Khan Younis.

Also, a second family member from the Abu Yousef family has been identified as: 2. Hanafi Mahmoud Abu Youssef, 42, Khuza’a, Khan Younis.

Twelve paramedics who were attempting to retrieve bodies from Khuza’a in eastern Khan Younis were detained by the Israeli military for several hours and prevented from reaching the killed and injured. They were eventually released.

Another Palestinian pulled from the rubble in Shuja’eyya was brought to Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Thursday, identified as: 10. Sa'er Owda Shamaly, 19

Two Palestinians, who were taken to Egypt for treatment of critical injuries sustained during Israeli bombardment, died in hospitals there, and their bodies have been returned to Gaza. They have been identified as: 11. Mohammed Yousef Al-Qadi, 27 12. Yasmin Ahmed Abu Moor, 27

The seventeen people killed in the bombing of a United Nations school in Beit Hanoun include a number of women and children who sought shelter there, after Israeli forces ordered them to leave their homes.

Most of those killed have not yet been identified. So far, medical sources have identified: 17. Ra'ed Abu Owda 17

The others killed on Thursday afternoon are still awaiting identification.

The wounded continue to pour in to already overwhelmed hospitals, which are running out of even the most basic medical supplies.

Suspicious circumstances, dozens feared dead UNRWA spokesman Adnan Abu Hasana said, today, that Israeli forces shelled a Beit Hanoun school serving as a shelter, earlier in the afternoon. They had received no prior warning. Dozens are feared dead.

According to Ma'an News Agency, the attack killed at least 17 people and injured more than 200, in what is now the fourth time in two days that Israeli forces have bombed schools serving as shelters in the besieged Gaza Strip.

"We told the army several times to warn us because we know that the school is located in a dangerous place. We told them to give us enough time so we can evacuate women and UNRWA team, but they did not," he said.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness tweeted, following the attack: "Precise co-ordinates of the UNRWA shelter in Beit Hanoun had been formally given to the Israeli army."

Earlier in the day, he tweeted that three teachers working for the UN agency had been killed, marking the first of casualites among UNRWA workers.

A report by RTE News reveals that UN spokesman Farhan Haq said separately that officials were trying to determine the number of UN staff member deaths, while stressing that it had not been established who had attacked the school.

An eyewitness was quoted by local radio as saying that, immediately before the shelling, a man introducing himself as a Red Cross official was asking people to gather in the yard because they would be evacuated to another shelter.

An UNRWA official saw people gathering asserted that there had been no coordination with UNRWA, and told them to go back to their rooms. During the argument which ensued, Israeli artillery shells began bombarding the school.

Abu Hasana said that the majority of the displaced people sheltering at the school were elderly people, women, and children.

During Israel's 2008-9 assault on Gaza, Israeli tanks shelled an area outside an UNRWA school in Jabaliya refugee camp, during which 42 people were killed. All but one were civilians.

Relatives bury the bodies of two Palestinian boys, Abdulrahamn Abed al-Nabi, 1, and Hadi Abed al-Nabi, 3, who medics said were killed in an Israeli air strike in northern Gaza on ThursdayThe Israeli military on Wednesday completely bombed the al-Wafa rehabilitation and geriatric hospital in the eastern Gaza City neighborhood of Shujaiya, after weeks of missile strikes, threats and forced evacuation of the patients, caregivers and hospital staff. Israeli daily Haaretzreported that the Israeli military claimed the hospital buildings were “being used as a Hamas command center and rocket-launching site.” However, the hospital director, Dr. Basman Alashi, says that Israel has targeted the hospital based on false and misleading claims. Activists with the International Solidarity Movement, who have been working closely with al-Wafa hospital staff and who attempted to prevent Israel from shelling the hospital two weeks ago, stated in a press release on Wednesday (including the photo below) that: On the 21 July at 2:17 PM, the IDF spokesperson released an image on twitter showing an aerial picture of a building marked as “Al-Wafa” hospital. In the image there is a red circle, which they designated as the location from which an M75 rocket was launched.

The building in the picture marked “Al-Wafa” hospital is in fact not the el-Wafa hospital but the Right to Life Society.​ (click on the picture to enlarge)Hospital bombed killing child in ICU The Gaza Ministry of Health reported that 797 Palestinians have now been killed, and more than 5,100 injured during sixteen consecutive days of Israel’s attacks. More than one hundred Palestinians were killed on Thursday alone, as Israel attacked multiple areas of the Gaza Strip, including a UN school in Beit Hanoun where Palestinians had sought refuge. Al-Wafa is just one of 26 medical facilities and services, including paramedic ambulances, clinics and major hospitals, to have been targeted by Israel in the last 16 days, notes the Ministry of Health. Ma’an News Agency reports today that Israel targeted the Muhammed al-Dura hospital and killed two-and-a-half-year-old Ibrahim al-Sheikh Omar who was in the intensive care unit after receiving treatment from an earlier injury. “Medical sources said the boy was hit by shrapnel from the explosion, killing him on the spot,” Ma’an reports. Thirty other Palestinians were injured in the missile strike on the hospital.

A clearer view of al-Wafa hospital. Note that it is in a different area entirely than the Israel army claims.“On Monday, Israeli shells left four dead and wounded 60 at the al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah. The attacks have also raised alarm around the world, as more than 50 mosques have been bombed as well as thousands of homes,” Ma’an adds.

Al-Wafa hospital was completely evacuated on 17 July, after Israel struck the building and told the staff that more missiles were on their way. The International Solidarity Movement states that al-Wafa hospital held “seven million dollars worth of essential medical equipment, as well as two safes that were irretrievable during the emergency evacuation.”

In Thursday’s interview with The Elecronic Intifada, Dr. Alashi said
that he received phone calls on Wednesday telling him that Israel was
planning to bomb the hospital completely, and saw video sent by the
Israeli army (and subsequently Tweeted by @IDFSpokesman)
of supposed fighters firing from the building. Alashi said that the
aerial photographs used by the Israeli army to manipulate support for
the action “do not represent the hospital at all.”
Transcript of interview with Dr. Alashi
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Dr. Alashi, can you talk about the most recent attacks on the hospital since you evacuated the patients on July 17?Basman Alashi Yesterday, we received a call saying
that the Israelis are bombing the hospital. I could not verify this
because the area, Shujaiya, where the hospital is located, is a
“forbidden zone” — no one can go in without coordination from the Red
Cross. So I could not verify it until I saw a video showing the hospital
blowing apart, with about two or three missiles, about one ton each.
That’s what I read in the news.
They destroyed two buildings, the old hospital, which is smaller than
the large one, and the large one, which is a new hospital. It was
destroyed completely. They based their information on fire coming out
from one of the buildings, and when I looked at the pictures, they
looked to me as if they were fabricated pictures that are not true,
similar to the pictures that they published a few days ago regarding the
declassified map, [showing] all the hospital, [claiming] that there was
firing happening very close to the hospital.
And when I looked at the picture, these pictures do not represent the
hospital at all. It’s another building for another society that is not
very close to our building. And since they misled people and the media
on the first one, I assumed that they did the same thing on the second
by just building excuses to bomb the hospital. So rationality for them
does not exist. What exists is that they have a bigger gun, and they
will act whether it is rational or irrational.
Talking to them, trying to convince them, trying to persuade them not
to bomb the hospital or talk them out of it, makes a waste of time for
us. They were determined to bomb the hospital, whether there are any
activities around it, or there isn’t. These are people who are meant to
disrupt the whole system in Gaza, they are meant to deprive the people
from having medical rehabilitation, and yesterday, I read a report that
30 percent of the 4,000 injured in Gaza need medical rehabilitation.
Since they bombed the hospital yesterday, there are none in Gaza which
can take care of them, and better their life, and bring them back to
live a normal life. So those people, men, women and children, they will
be burdens on their families, because they will be handicapped. They
will be a burden on their community, their government, and the whole
world.
So the action of the Israelis has created a new generation of
handicapped in Gaza that God knows how can the Gazans — despite their
difficulties and displacement from their home right now, how will they
take care of these members of their families?NBF: Dr. Alashi, to be clear and to reiterate what
you said, you said there are two sets of photographs that you believe
are falsified by the Israeli military to justify the bombing — the
series of bombings and attacks on the al-Wafa hospital over the past two
weeks — can you talk a little more about that, and why you think the
Israeli army would falsify these kinds of photographs?BA: The second picture that they showed there are
some people firing from a gun out from the hospital. I only saw a flash
of fire. There is no way for me to verify these fires — as they said,
these happened two days ago, before they started destroying the hospital
[again], and I know the Israeli army acts immediately whenever they see
fire coming out from a building or a place. Immediately, the drones or
F-16s, within minutes, they fire at this place. Now, they chose not to
fire at this place. I don’t understand why.
Informants or IDF [Israeli army] members, they could have set up, and
gone inside the building — since we evacuated the building on the 17th
of July, we are not responsible who gets in and gets out of that
building, because we have vacated it. And the Israelis forced us to
leave the buildings.
So it is not our responsibility who gets inside, and that area is a
warzone area, so it could be an Israeli inside, it could be fighters
inside, it could be anybody inside. They claimed that it was
Palestinians inside, and I doubt that it is true because I have seen
them lie before. And I would assume that they lied again. So those
pictures — there’s a question mark on it, and I don’t have any
confirmation that what they’re saying is true, because it’s a one-sided
story.NBF: Dr. Alashi, al-Wafa is one of 26 medical
facilities, including major hospitals such as Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital
that have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli shelling. As a physician,
as the executive director of a hospital yourself, what do these kinds
of attacks mean, when Israel is indiscriminately going after medical
facilities, paramedics, doctors, nurses, and the kinds of equipment, the
necessary medical equipment such as what you have in al-Wafa rehab
hospital, at this point?BA: The Israeli attacks on medical hospitals and
clinics and schools give us several messages — that the Israelis want
the Palestinians in Gaza, especially, to live in under-developed,
uneducated and under unhealthy conditions, to keep a bind on them, to
keep control of them, to keep the blockade from sea, land and water. And
we don’t understand any justifications for them doing this but to
increase the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, to condition them to
accept their terms.
But the Palestinians here — they are determined, even if they lost
their houses, their property, their crops and their animals — they say
“we will live in dignity, or we die. We don’t want to live under
occupation anymore. We had it for 66 years, and we don’t want it
anymore.” Everybody in the streets say “enough is enough. We either live
free or just die, and it’s better for us.”

Following the furor created by a tweet asking if Palestinian children killed in Gaza are “halal meat,” French politician Jacques Renaud is reportedly disavowing ownership of the Twitter account bearing his name.

The newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest now reports
that Renaud, deputy mayor of Montreuil-Juigné, “officially denies any
role and is currently at the police station lodging a formal complaint
against X for identity theft.”

The mayor of the town, currently abroad, supports Renaud “unreservedly,
considering it impossible that her deputy could be the author of such an
odious message, adding that he does not have an account on Twitter,”
the newspaper said.

The French website Al-Kanz had said in its report earlier
that it had called up the Montreuil-Juigné town hall “to make sure that
this really was the Twitter account of Jacques Renaud. It was confirmed
to us that the elected official does have a Twitter account and this
was him.”

-------------------------------------------------------
IMEMC notes that, according to a recent post
on human rights blog Occupied Palestine, Twitter user @StonMichel
responded to one of Renaud’s tweets, calling for “a bit of humanity” and
attaching a graphic image apparently of the dismembered body of a young Palestinian child.

Thousands marched
in cities around France, this past Saturday, according to Haaretz, who
recently reported that Paris demonstrators climbed to the top of a
building in order to burn an Israeli flag and at least one car, in the
streets.

(The French government attempted to ban the march, but citizens defied the ban.)

Kedar, who is an academic expert on the Palestinian population within Israel, served for twenty-five years in the military intelligence, where he specialized in Islamic groups.

He is a researcher at the right-wing Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies of Bar Ilan University, as well as the founder and current director of the Israel Academia Monitor, a neo-McCarthyst website that follows alleged "anti-Israel activities of Israeli academics".

The IMEMC notes: UK daily news site International Business Times stated, recently, that Kedar's words have triggered an angered reaction among feminist activists in Israel, who sent a letter to the University's president, one Rabbinic professor Daniel Hershkowitz, in which they condemn Kedar's "words of incitement that grant legitimacy to Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israeli civilians to commit rape, and endanger both Israeli and Palestinian women:

"Kedar's words echo expressions that treat rape as a remedial practice, although it is a war crime," he said.

Considering the fact that Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian community -- which, in fact, comprises what is now the very largest refugee population in the entire world -- have historically garnered little more than token denunciations from international legislators, the use of the term "war crime" is perhaps less than sufficient to express the reality of rape and genocide for its victims.

Rape is an act of brutal violence, of the most inhumane proportions, which primarily occurs in three settings: urban civilian neighborhoods, military societies -- and prisons. There is no acceptable theater for such heinous crimes as rape, genocide and ethnic cleansing, regardless of who is currently sputtering from the far reaches of the international podium.

Those living under the constituency of Western policy makers might, in fact, see such crimes from a very different angle in comparison to that of their political representatives who live, at best, on the utter fringes of the populations they are sworn to represent.

Have we suddenly opened our doors to a pack of rapist thugs, turning what is essentially no more a blind eye to the victims of this epidemically rampant hypocrisy on the part of world leaders? Shall we continue to skim the headlines of internationally syndicated yellow journalists, as we text friends and family from taverns amid the drone of affiliate TV sports casts and the chuckle-headed gossip of misinformed pundits which encompasses the majority of what continues to be foisted upon masses of registered voters as "news"?

Or, are the roots of such politics embedded much deeper into our past, as is undeniably the very ethnic and religious nature which forms the basis of these so-called "war crimes"?

As human rights blog Occupied Palestine also recently noted via Press TV, clerical status within the Jewish community is not necessarily a pretext for peaceful diplomacy among pro-Israeli pundits.

Dov Lior, an illegal settler and rabbi from Kiryat Arba, in the occupied West Bank, recently uttered his self-ordained holy proclamation that the killing of innocent civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip was acceptable and, to quote Lior: "okay".

Rather than allowing our analysis, and that of our families, to be continually guided by the mediocrity of yet another millennium of unenlightened human shepherds and self-proclaimed prophets, perhaps we should ask ourselves:

Is this the new provincial edict we have allowed to be tacked to our doors in 2014? Has the underlying moral basis of documents such as the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights finally been cashed in for the same antiquated cage of olive-wreathed imperial gluttony, rattling along in choralesque harmony with centuries-old patriarchal brown-nosing and deceit?

OFID Approves $500,000 for Gaza “With no regard to human life, Israel, the occupying Power, continues to slaughter entire families,” Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the United Nation, Ambassador Riyad Mansour, said during an open debate at the United Nations Security Council. Additionally, the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) has approved a $500,000 grant of humanitarian relief for Gaza's victims. According to WAFA Palestinian News & Info Agency, Mansour said that “despite all regional and international efforts, hundreds more Palestinian civilians have been killed, thousands have been injured and tens of thousands have been displaced by the Israeli military aggression in Gaza.”

“Israeli bombardment – including missile airstrikes, bombs and artillery shelling by air, land and sea at densely-populated areas – has also resulted in the destruction of more than 1,000 homes and damage to more than 18,000 other homes,” he added, underscoring:

“Fear and panic have gripped the population, leading to the displacement of more than 100,000 people, who are now sheltering in UNRWA schools, already double the number of Palestinians who sought refuge in the Agency’s schools in the Israeli war on Gaza of 2008-2009.”

“With no regard to human life, Israel, the occupying Power, continues to slaughter entire families. A family of 26 people in Khan Younis, Al-Jami’ family; a family of 8 people in northern Gaza; Abu Jarad family; a family of 10 people in Shujaiya, Ayyad family; a family of 7 people in Shujaiya, Al-Hallaq family; a family of 6 people in Shujaiya, Al-Sakafi family; a family of 5 people also in Shujaiya, Sleem family; a family of 4 people in Shujaiya , Al-Hayyeh family; a family of 4 people in northern Gaza, Al-Zuweidi family, were among the many victims of Israel’s heinous attacks in just the past three days, with children and women constituting the majority of the dead.

“When hospital floors are drowning in the blood of innocents, corridors are filled with the deafening screams of pain of the wounded and cries of the grief and anguish for loved ones killed, and doctors, with barely any supplies and deprived of sleep and sustenance struggle courageously …. The international community has failed to enforce the rule of law, and failed its promise to humanity.

“On behalf of the Palestinian people, we ask: What is the international community doing to stop this bloodletting, to stop Israel’s atrocities? What is the Security Council doing to uphold its commitment to protect civilians in armed conflict and uphold the law and the Charter?” Manour asks.

“Israel’s impunity must be halted and the pretexts for its crimes rejected,” he assserted:

“We reiterate that it is no coincidence that this latest aggression was launched amid increased international pressure on Israel in the peace process; international acceptance of the Palestinian unity government; intensifying world condemnation of the settlements, settler terror, provocations in East Jerusalem, the Gaza blockade, the crisis of the Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and Israel’s destruction of the two-state solution, and the growing global calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”

On a note of hope, in related international news, the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) approved, Wednesday, a $500,000 grant in humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.

In a press release issued online, OFID stated that the grant will be channelled through the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and operations will be implemented by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). It is estimated that around 35,000 people will directly benefit from OFID’s grant.

There are currently over 100,000 people, including entire families, seeking shelter at UNRWA schools in the region.

As of January 2014, there were approximately 5.4 million Palestinians registered as refugees in various regions across the globe, according to UNRWA.

A toddler was killed and dozens of other Palestinians were injured in a Gaza City hospital late Thursday as an Israeli bomb struck the area, medics said.

Ibrahim al-Sheikh Omar, two-and-a-half years old, was in the ICU of Muhammad al-Durra hospital when an Israeli strike hit outside.

Medical sources said the boy was hit by shrapnel from the explosion, killing him on the spot.

Thirty other Palestinians were injured in the strike.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an she was looking into the incident.

The army has repeatedly claimed that hospitals have been used as launching grounds for Palestinian militants during the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

On Monday, Israeli shells left four dead and wounded 60 at the al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah.

The attacks have also raised alarm around the world, as more than 50 mosques have been bombed as well as thousands of homes.

UN rights chief Navi Pillay said Wednesday that Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip could amount to war crimes.

"There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes," Pillay told an emergency session on Israel's Gaza offensive at the UN Human Rights Council, citing attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians, including children.

Pillay added that the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas does not justify war crimes on the Israeli side.

INTERVIEW: Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, talks to Ynet about Israel's military and moral superiority over Hamas, and says Israel should hit Gaza harder and faster. Israel's military makes more effort than any other army to prevent civilian casualties, but should be more aggressive in Gaza, says Colonel (ret.) Richard Kemp CBE, the former commander of the British armed forces in Afghanistan and fierce international advocate for the IDF.

"I would like to see
the IDF operating much faster, going in perhaps harder and faster,
that's what I would like to see," Kemp told Ynet on Wednesday.
"But having said that, I recognize - as you recognize - the pressures
on Israel from all around the world to absolutely minimize the number
of civilian casualties they're causing", he added. "I believe that on
the basis of everything that I've seen, that everything the IDF does to
protect civilians and to stop the death of innocent civilians is a great
deal more than any other army, and it's more than the British and the
American armies."Kemp, who was a strong advocate for Israel in the wake of 2012's Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, said he had come to Israel now "to get as close of a vew as I can of the current conflict, so I can make my own assessment of what's happened, to contribute to the international commentary that's taking place on Israel."IDF evidence?VIDEO: Terrorists fire rockets from Gaza hospitalUN chief alarmed as rockets found in Gaza school go missing